51.  The sense seems to be this—­when a creature stands before a mirror, its image is formed in the mirror; such reflection, however, never affects the mirror in the least, for when the object leaves the vicinity of the mirror, the image or reflection vanishes away.  The soul is like the mirror.  Pleasure and pain are like reflections in it.  They come and go away without the soul being at all modified by them in anyway.  Pleasure and pain are destructible, but not so the soul.

52.  The ordinary man thinks this conglomeration of diverse objects to be his self.  The man of wisdom who has exhausted his acts does not think so.  He is freed from the obligation of taking a body.

53.  The sense probably is this.  En the case of ordinary men, the component parts of the body dissolve away, while Yogins can keep such parts from dissolution as long as they like.

54.  The sense is, the deities bear away to the next world the animals slain in sacrifices Through the bodies of such animals are apparently destroyed, yet their life-breaths and senses continue to exist.

55.  The sense is that as wives etc., when lost, are sources of sorrow, wise men should abstain from contracting such relations.  They might then be free from sorrow.

56.  Paraparajnah is one that understands the distinction between body and sell.  Apara is, therefore, one that is not possessed of such knowledge; hence, as Nilakantha explains, it implies one who has not attained to Jnana nishtha.  What is said in the second line is that he that adores saguna Brahma, succeeds afterwards, through such adoration, in reaching to nirguna Brahma.

57.  The sense seems to be this:  we spring from the unmanifest and disappear once more in the unmanifest.  The Bengal texts read the first line incorrectly.  It is adarsanalapatitah.  The second line is unintelligible.  Naham tam vedini is taken by Nilakantha as implying ’I do not know him,’ i.e., him that is Emancipate.  Asau cha no vetti mam is explained as a due to karanabhat.  But who is asau?  ’I have no renunciation,’ or ‘renunciation is not yet mine,’ implies that Emancipation, which directly flows from renunciation, is not mine.

58.  What is stated here is that if a man does an act that is bad, its consequences he will have to endure in a human body.  The same with regard to rewards.  By doing a meritorious act in one’s human form, one will enjoy its good consequences in one’s human body.  So acts done mentally affect the mind and those done with the body affect the body.

It should be noted that the whole of the above translation is offered tentatively.  A verbal rendering has been attempted.  The chain of reasoning is not at all clear.  The commentator has done much to elucidate the sense, but the original obscurities have scarcely been removed.

59.  The Bengal reading manah is incorrect.  It should be punah.

60.  Nripam pradakshinam chakru is the construction.  Nivarana has snanapanat understood after it.